7 Ways to Make Your Business Website Stand Out in a Crowded Market

In today’s digital age, it doesn’t matter if you’re selling butter, music, property, or any other product or service. The success of your business hinges on the quality of your website and how it makes a memorable impression in the crowded marketplace.

Savvy business owners know that impressive websites don’t exist by accident; they are carefully and thoughtfully constructed.

In this article, we’ll explore seven ways to get your business website to stand out from the crowd. We’ll equip you with the knowledge you need to attract and engage your audience and make a lasting impact. 

1. Think Like A User

User experience should be the starting point of every action you take with regard to your business website.

So you need to think about what your user wants and needs. If you were your own potential customer, what would make you want to stay on your site? What would turn you off instantly?

In order to create a stand-out user experience, your business website should be:

• Easy to navigate (with logical menu structures and labeling)
• Easy to understand (make who you are and what you do obvious right from the home page)
• Informative, but not overly detailed
• Quick to load (speedy navigation is pivotal to a premium user experience)

In addition to the above, you should generally keep your user in mind whenever you make changes or add content to your site.

2. Define Your Brand

In order to form a connection with your business, visitors need to be able to recognise it as a distinct entity. To achieve this, you need to flesh out the elements that make up your brand identity.

Just look at Kerrygold Ireland to see how this is done. Kerrygold uses its website to further its brand identity as a company steeped in a history of producing premium-quality dairy products. This extends to its signature green-and-gold color scheme and detailed and visually engaging “Our Heritage” page.

If you can follow Kerrygold’s lead and transfer your brand identity and image to the look and feel of your website, you’ll have a winner on your hands. Consistent branding that reflects both your product/service and your core business values is pivotal to establishing consumer trust in your business.

3. Employ Evocative Design

Now that you have established your brand identity, it can form the basis of your site’s visual design. Ideally, you will work closely with your web developer to realise your vision of a stand-out business website.

This begins with selecting the ideal website template for your purposes. A striking business website template:

• Is unique, without being overly complex
• Is highly customisable
• Is adaptable for mobile interfaces

Every visual aspect of your site – from color scheme to font type – should reflect your brand image. Always remember to balance aesthetic objectives with usability. A striking font is only as good as how easy it is to read.

4. Communicate Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

When you’re designing a website, it’s easy to get so bogged down in design elements that you forget why you’re creating the site in the first place.

This is why it’s important, from the outset, to clearly define your unique selling proposition (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition. It’s what compels customers to go to you rather than another provider.

As such, your entire website should be centered on your USP. This includes both content and design. After all, your USP is the reason why visitors come to your site!

5. Include High-Quality Content

In a highly competitive marketplace, website visitors expect to find more than just your details on your site – they expect value. By including quality content, such as blog posts and videos, on your site, you can provide visitors with the value they’ve come to expect.

This is why brands are now investing 41% of their overall marketing budget in content. High-quality content makes visitors feel that your site adds value to their lives in some way. You can share content in the form of text-only posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, or any other medium that your imagination can dream up.

A great example of this is the record label RCA, which features a “Listen” button on its menu bar that allows visitors to select and listen to the latest tracks by RCA artists as they browse. We can’t imagine a better way to get visitors into a buying mood!

6. Master Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

In addition to adding value for site visitors, premium content attracts more potential customers to your site. Statistics show that business websites with blogs earn 67% more leads per month than those without them.

This phenomenon is the result of another essential component of stand-out business sites – search engine optimisation (SEO). With the right content and an SEO-optimised design, your site will rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). In other words, if users Google search terms related to your business, your site is more likely to show up near the top of the list.

High-ranking sites and pages:

• Are easy for search engines to crawl
• Are easy for visitors to navigate
• Include content that satisfies search intent and demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness
• Contain relevant keywords
• Link to other high-ranking sites
• Are linked to by other reputable sites

7. Share Testimonials and Success Stories

Don’t expect visitors to take your word for it when you say your product or service is better than that of the competition. Show off your experience and expertise with glowing (but true) testimonials or case studies of successful projects.

For example, when real estate agents build their websites, they generally include a section for client testimonials, with real buyers and sellers singing their praises. This creates a human connection and stands out in people’s minds. Consumers also tend to trust real reviews as they feel more authentic and they build trust, too.  

Stand-Out Websites are Always Evolving

Now that you’ve created your stand-out business website don’t make the mistake of sitting back and expecting the leads to keep rolling in.

The best business sites are regularly updated, using the plethora of web analytics now at our disposal. Stay on top of your site to ensure it is running smoothly and that your content is fresh!